Sam Altman testifies in Musk trial

The OpenAI trial is finally at the point where the two stories collide. One story is Elon Musk’s claim that OpenAI betrayed its founding mission. The other is Sam Altman’s claim that Musk wanted control, lost that fight, and is now trying to use the courts to claw influence back. On Tuesday, May 12, 2026, Altman took the stand in federal court in Oakland and tried to make that second story stick. ### What is this trial actually about? Musk sued OpenAI, Altman, Greg Brockman, and related entities in August 2024. The core accusation is simple: Musk says he helped found and fund OpenAI as a nonprofit lab meant to build AI for humanity, not as a vehicle for executives and investors to make money. He says the later for-profit structure broke that deal. The case is in the Northern District of California as *Musk v. Altman*. (cnbc.com) ### What did Altman say on the stand? Altman’s main point was blunt — he never promised Musk that OpenAI would remain a pure nonprofit forever. He testified that he made no commitments to Musk about the company’s long-term corporate structure. That matters because Musk’s case leans heavily on the idea that OpenAI’s later shift toward a commercial model was a betrayal, not just an evolution. (courtlistener.com) ### Why did Tesla come up? Because one of the weirdest early forks in OpenAI’s history is whether it might have been absorbed into Musk’s car company. Altman testified that joining Tesla would have damaged OpenAI’s mission and maybe destroyed the nonprofit entirely. He also said Musk’s management style demotivated some researchers and that Musk’s departure from OpenAI in 2018 was, for some employees, a morale boost. Basically, Altman used the stand to argue that Musk was never just a disappointed donor — he was a would-be controller. (cnbc.com) ### Why is Altman’s credibility under pressure? Because the trial is no longer just about old emails and founding ideals. Former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever testified that he spent about a year gathering evidence for OpenAI’s board that Altman showed a “consistent pattern of lying.” That testimony reaches back to the 2023 board coup that briefly pushed Altman out. Even if Musk’s lawsuit is about structure, the courtroom fight is also turning into a referendum on whether Altman is personally trustworthy. (cnbc.com) ### Is this only about Musk now? Not really. Separate scrutiny is piling up around Altman and OpenAI from other directions. One thread involves questions in Washington about Altman’s financial interests, including his stake in fusion company Helion. Another, more explosive thread is a new Florida lawsuit blaming OpenAI for allegedly helping a gunman plan the 2025 Florida State University shooting through ChatGPT interactions. OpenAI has denied the allegation and said its models are designed to refuse harmful instructions. (channelnewsasia.com) ### Does the Florida case affect the Musk trial? Not directly in a legal sense, but it affects the atmosphere. Musk’s case says OpenAI abandoned its public-interest mission. A lawsuit claiming ChatGPT contributed to real-world violence pushes that same anxiety into a much darker register. The catch is that the two cases ask different questions — one is about corporate promises, the other about product safety and causation. Still, both increase the cost of losing public trust. (apnews.com) ### What was the point of Altman’s testimony? He needed to do more than deny facts. He needed to present a coherent motive story. His version is that Musk wanted more control, failed to get it, left, and later reframed that defeat as a moral betrayal by OpenAI. If the jury buys that, Musk’s case starts to look less like enforcement of a founding bargain and more like a very expensive revenge plot. (apnews.com) ### Bottom line Altman’s day on the stand did not end the fight. But it clarified the real contest. This is no longer just a dispute over nonprofit paperwork. It is a battle over who gets to define what OpenAI was supposed to be — and whether Altman can survive as the face of that answer. (cnbc.com)